6/16/2006

Apparently there are good reasons to sleep with your gun under your pillow

I have never known someone who has actually done this (it seems like you would find it quite uncomfortable sometimes, though may be he uses a really big pillow). Anyway, I am sure that Mr. Brown believes that sleeping with a gun under his pillow was well worth any discomfort.

6/15/2006

I thought that gun bans would stop this

Oops. Apparently people have figured out how to make weapons themselves. In any case, the problem that I have with this article is one of causation. Guns fuel crime, but may be there is some desire to commit crime that creates the desire to get the weapons and that there are a lot of different weapons to pick from.

Media and Terrorism: Good for each other?

I know Bruno and he is a good, well known economist. Despite its name however, the Granger Causality test doesn't really test causality. It just says that if there is a change in one variable, there is a change after that in the change of some other variable. That is interesting, but it isn't a test of causality. It would have been nice to have more media covered than just two newspapers, though I presume that there is a lot of correlation between coverage in the NY Times and the rest of the media. My work with Kevin Hassett, however, indicates that there are significant differences across even just newspapers.

By the way, Eric Root sent me a couple of examples of self defense from his own life:

a couple of years ago, I encountered several drunk campers burning a picnic table at about 11:00 PM. I went a short distance from their campfire, called the police, and continued to track what they were doing. In retrospect, I misjudged the situation - thinking that it was more benign than it was. They ordered me to leave, and laughlingly said, "Good luck finding any evidence when the police get here." I remained where I could see them. Two men pursued me, eventually attacking me front and back. All three of us went to the ground, one on my back choking me and the other in front keeping my hands down and hitting me. After about a minute, I realized that this was not just about beating me up, but was a murder in progress - they were trying to kill me. There were other members of the group I was hoping would pull their buddies off, so there was still some possibility that I could get out of this without shooting either man. I cocked the pistol in my pocket and I began counting down to time the last moments to the point at which I would either take their lives or they would take mine. My patience was rewarded, their friends stopped the choking before I had to pull the trigger. They continued to hit me, but addressing that could wait for the police to show up.

Contrast that with another incident involving twelve weight lifters who I had earlier thrown off our property for inappropriate behavior. They had canoed downriver to another of our beaches where they were surrounding and threatening eight young women. When I arrived on the scene, about half of these guys were naked and it was clear to me that they were intending one or more rapes (the women confirmed afterwards that they thought the same thing on the basis of the obvious signs of excitement). I chased the nearest one off (the little noisy one I judged to be a coward), and shoved a second one into the water (the oldest one that I judged to be looking for an excuse to leave). Then the biggest of the men, who appeared to be the group's dominant member, came at me, demanding to know, "What are you going to do with me?' He was about 6' 3" tall, and weighed about 270 - almost none of which was fat. I told him that he was 35 pounds heavier and 30 years younger than I was, that I wasn’t going to fight him, I was going to shoot him. I also said that if his friends got behind me or did anything other than immediately leave, I was going to shoot him first. I was not bluffing, they knew it, they swore and threatened retaliation, but they left promptly. It is worth noting that the weapon involved was a derringer chambered for 45 Long Colt. I could not have wounded or killed more than two of them.

Lindgren's post on David Gross and the Survey data

Jim Lindgren has a new post that indicates that a concern Lindgren raised earlier that David Gross might have taken Hemenway's 1996 survey and not my 1997 survey. In bold type near the end of his post he notes:

Lindgren notes that it is possible that Gross may have taken another suurvey in 1997, but no such remotely similar survey has ever surfaced. Opponents, even those immersed in these issues, have not pointed to any remotely similar survey during anywhere near that time period. If Lindgren does not believe that Gross is making up this memory out of whole cloth and Lindgren claims that he believes that Gross did take a survey when Gross says that he did, either point to some other possible survey that was given around that time or concede that Gross took my 1997 survey. Of course, I raised this several years ago and at that time Lindgren pointed to the 1996 Hemenway survey. Now that Hemenway has finally released the data from that survey, it is clear to everyone that Gross could not have taken that survey. Rather than just conceding the point, Lindgren points to claimed inconsistencies in Gross's statements, but Gross strongly disagrees with those claims (see point 4a). David Mustard also states that Lindgren inaccurately reported what Mustard told Lindgren.

It is also very disappointing that Lindgren has put no pressure what so ever on getting Hemenway to release his 1999 data. However, Lindgren in a email to me this week indicates that: "By the way, when I talked with either Hemenway or the survey organization they used for the 1996 study, they suggested that for most of their studies after 1996, they had lists at least of the telephone numbers used (they didn't for the 1996 study except on paper in boxes someplace)." However, Hemenway told Jeff Parker earlier this year something quite different:

From: David Hemenway [mailto:hemenway@hsph.harvard.edu] Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 10:56 AMTo: Jeffrey ParkerSubject: Re: John Lott surveyDear Jeffrey:Unfortunately, it does not appear to be possible. I emailed the survey firm which conducted the surveys, and they no longer have the data on the phone numbers. Here is the email response I received.Best Regards,David

Just as he did for years with the 1996 survey, Hemenway has consistently refused to release the 1999 data.

Should off-duty and retired police in San Diego be able to carry guns? Apparently not according to some.

This post touches on something that I have been arguing for a long time (e.g., see here for one of my past pieces). I guess that I have a really hard time understanding why even the police or retired police can't be trusted to carry guns. I would trust more than just those individuals, but it seems very difficult for gun control advocates to continue claiming with a straight face that we can trust the police.

So what is the value of a fish?

From Brendan Miniter at OpinionJournal.com's Political DIary:

Credit Rep. George Radanovich, a California Republican and chairman of the subcommittee on Water and Power, with eliciting one of the report's most chin-dropping disclosures: The Bonneville Power Administration routinely is forced to release water from one its power-generating dams to benefit a handful of salmon. The number of fish saved? Twenty. The value of the electricity lost downstream? Approximately $77 million -- about $3.85 million per fish.

Political correctness and breast-feeding

I am not sure that I understand this. It is OK to make parents "feel guilty" about second hand smoke (even when the science isn't there), but it is butting into people's business and improperly making them feel guilty to say that children are better off being breast feed. I definitely don't think that the government should get involved in either case, but is it me or is it just that there is a bias against making women feel that they should stay home raising their kids?

One could also add how having a child and breast-feeding, especially when the woman is at a relatively young age, reduces the risks of breast cancer. (This study doesn't differentiate by the age of the mother when she starts breast-feeding and this average effect hides the big benefit of doing it at younger ages.)

6/12/2006

Don Kates: "VICTORY IN SF!"

Email from Don Kates:

Last November San Francisco enacted what was billed as a handgun ban -- it banned and confiscated all handguns in the city and severely restricted even police access to handguns -- but also included a ban on sale of all long guns This was Round 2: In 1982 San Francisco had enacted a similar handgun ban that did not apply to long guns at all. Twin cases were filed then, one by the NRA and one by me on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation, and that ban was held invalid as contrary to state law. As to the Nov., 2005 ban(s), suit was brought by a law firm w/ which I am Of Counsel, Trutanich & Michel, on behalf of the NRA and many individual San Franciscans. Today the SF Superior Court threw out the entire Ordinance. Kudos are due to a host of lawyers who filed amicus briefs including one for the Pink Pistols a group championing the right of gays to possess arms for self-defense.

LA Times Letter to Editor: Re "Shooting holes in a lawsuit," Opinion, May 31

Unfortunately, this letter was substantially shortened and somewhat altered the meaning due to space limits on letters. It is also unfortunate that the LA Times did not publish any letters from other academics who had written in.

In his op-ed piece, “Gun-research 'Freak'-out” (LA Times, May 31), Jon Wiener says, “Blocking the sale of a book based on a literal interpretation of a single word would be outrageous.” But this is not the issue. In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner say, “When other scholars have tried to replicate [Lott’s] results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime.” This statement is false under any reasonable interpretation. We replicated Lott’s results, as have many other scholars. If Levitt did not know this, then he was lax in his scholarship. Levitt should know that among scholars “unable to replicate” is interpreted as “something is seriously wrong here.” Moreover, the phrase carries the suggestion of, at best, incompetence and, more likely, dishonesty. Levitt should express his disagreement with Lott in a way that does not imply incompetence or dishonesty. It is thoroughly reasonable to require a publisher to revise a sentence for future sales if the existing sentence is false and defamatory.

Nicolaus TidemanBlacksburg, VA

Florenz PlassmannIthaca, NY

See also:

Dear Mr. Goldberg: At the end of his op-ed piece, “Gun-research 'Freak'-out” (LA Times, May 31), Jon Wiener says, “Blocking the sale of a book based on a literal interpretation of a single word would be outrageous.” But the relevant issue is not “a literal interpretation of a single word.” In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner say, “When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry laws simply don't bring down crime.” This statement is false under any reasonable interpretation of the words. In our understanding, and in the understanding of colleagues we consulted, what is generally meant in economics by replicating someone’s work is gathering the same data and analyzing them in the way that the original researcher had analyzed them. We took an interest in the issue of guns and crime when Lott’s work was first published. We gathered the data that he had used, analyzed it in the way that he described and got essentially the same results. Thus we replicated Lott’s work. In some circumstances, what is meant by replicating someone’s work is to gather similar data and analyze it in the same way. But that interpretation would not be relevant here, because (as often happen in economics) the data that Lott used were all of the data that were available. Should “replicate” be stretched to mean “undertake similar analyses and reach similar results”? Well, we analyzed the guns and crime data in additional ways that we regarded as interesting and reached results that were broadly in agreement with those that Lott had reached. Is there any reason why our work (“Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say,” Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001, Volume 44, Number 2, Part 2, pp.771-798), should not count as a replication of Lott’s work? Wiener quotes in apparent endorsement Levitt’s assertion that, “for $15,000 [Lott] was able to buy an issue [of the Journal of Law and Economics] and put in only work that supported him.” This is not what happened. We presented our work at a conference that Lott organized. At Lott’s invitation, we submitted our work for a special issue of the Journal of Law and Economics that Lott arranged. A letter from an editor (Sam Peltzman, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago) informed us that we would need to address the concerns of a referee who had reviewed our work before a decision would be made as to whether it would be published. A later letter for Peltzman informed us that our revision in response to the referee’s comments was accepted. Thus our work was not “put in” the Journal of Law and Economics by Lott but rather accepted for publication after scholarly review. The basic issue between Lott and Levitt is not whether the results of either scholar can be replicated, but rather what statistical analyses are appropriate to make inferences about the effect on crime of allowing more citizens to carry guns. It is not unreasonable to require Levitt to find a way to express his analytical disagreement with Lott without implying that others who analyze the data in the way that Lott did do not get the same results. While lawyers are better suited to opine on what legal measures are appropriate to achieve this end, it seems to us not unreasonable, prima facie, to require a publisher to revise a sentence for future sales if the existing sentence is false and defamatory.

Edwards edges out Clinton in Iowa Poll

The fact that Democratic heavy weights such as Tom Daschle and Al Gore are toying with entering the Democratic primaries indicates to me that there is a lot of doubt about Hillary being a strong candidate.

Wal-Mart Quickly Going Nutsy Politically Correct

Recently I noted how Wal-Mart had stopped selling guns at 1,000 stores. Now it is giving away free gun locks, moving away from free trade (at least on items that are not politically correct), and supporting minimum wage laws. With the Sam Walton family dying off, the new people who have taken control don't have the same values. On the so-called "fair trade coffee" issue, my rule is simply to buy the cheapest coffee, just as it doesn't make much sense to have customers of steel in the US pay higher prices just to protect jobs in some industries at the expense of jobs in others (e.g., cars and other companies that make things out of steel). If it turns out that Brazilian cooperatives produce the cheapest coffee, fine. But if that is the case, I don't understand why anything special needs to be made of the term "fair trade."

As Robert points out in the comment section beating me to the punch, none of these cases obviously took place because of the new rules. No comparison is made to previous years. No evidence is provided that any of these individuals even claimed that they behaved differently because of the law. Despite the anti-gun nature of the piece, no cases are actually pointed to saying that the new law has resulted in any different out come, legally or otherwise.